This sponsored article is part of a paid partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music.
Louisville-based composer, producer, and performer TJ Cole has built a career and an artistic persona through an eclectic array of styles. From orchestral and chamber music to electro-acoustic and theater works, Cole’s music finds a way to subvert expectations by blending tradition and experimentation. These interdisciplinary interests most recently coalesced in their work Phenomenal of the Earth (2023) for synthesizer, theatrical percussionist, and strings, which they wrote during their time in the Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps program.
On Dec. 13, the Curtis Institute of Music will perform their Death of the Poet (2014), an orchestral work written while they were a student at the institution. This earlier work in Cole’s catalog highlights their skill weaving emotive melodic material into expressively orchestrated harmonies. The work’s success resulted in a 2014 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, one of two they received, along with their string quartet Playtime in 2020.
However, Death of the Poet was written a decade ago and is only one example of Cole’s multi-faceted approach. Their newest commission for Curtis’ 100 for 100 campaign – a solo synthesizer work titled the music was so beautiful, that i realized i hadn’t forgiven myself, and cried – is a new marker on their compositional journey, highlighting the evolution of their style and interests.
Cole is also half of Choir Siren, an improvised electro-acoustic duo that they launched with violinist-composer Emily Ravenscraft in 2023. The innovative collaboration explores unusual sound worlds and creates unique experiential environments through any medium necessary, including synthesizers, live sound design, movement, props, and other visual elements.
Cole’s untethered artistry retains a sense of humor and approachability through it all. In advance of the performance at Curtis on Dec. 13, we asked them five questions about the development of their practice over the past decade.
Do the terms “composer, producer, and performer” even begin to encapsulate the breadth of interdisciplinary mediums in your creative projects and collaborations, or do we need to invent new language that better represents who you are and what you do?
I love a good umbrella term! “Artist” feels open-ended, even if it’s a bit corny. I often feel boxed into “composer” because of my trained background. While I value it, it doesn’t fully capture the hats I wear.
I love blurring lines between disciplines. Recently, I co-created a performance with my friend Joyce Barbour called No One Questions a Mountain. Joyce and I shared leadership in a way that felt very anarchist—as a trained visual artist, she did most of the musical composition, while I played with movement, props, and singing. Our conversations kept circling around the intersection of trans bodies and landscapes, and not being assigned specific roles allowed my body and movement to become a focal point, making me feel more like a performance artist. Collaborating blurs those lines. Boxed terms can frustrate me, but it’s fun to keep people guessing.
Humor feels essential in your process; it’s at the forefront of your newer works, but it’s less apparent in your earlier works such as Death of The Poet. When did you embrace humor in your creative process, and what else has changed since Death of the Poet?
Death of the Poet holds a special place in my heart, but it came out of my “moody-boy” era. Humor has naturally appeared in my work over the years, but lately, it’s been holding my attention more. I gravitate toward creating experiences that evoke big emotions—probably because I’m a “big feelings” person. Death of the Poet was pivotal for me in realizing that I have an ability to translate those feelings into my work. The response I’ve gotten from that piece, especially emails from audience members sharing how it helped them cry or grieve, has been incredibly humbling.
That said, I think right now I’m more interested in making people laugh, which doesn’t feel commonplace in the concert hall. I hate how physically rigid it can feel to sit through a concert, so laughter feels like a way to loosen everyone up—including myself.
Humor really clicked for me while I was composing Playtime. It was commissioned to premiere on a vineyard in a “high-society” setting. I wanted to challenge those kinds of spaces that are so common in the classical arts, maybe because I feel out of place in them. I thrifted children’s toys and played with them for inspiration, which made the process silly and playful. I loved writing that piece.
A few years ago, I hit burnout and seriously considered walking away from composing. I was working constantly, making very little, and feeling immense pressure from higher-ups, donors, and institutions to conform to narrow expectations. Most of composing happens behind the scenes, and I found myself in a really dark place because the process felt suffocating.
Since coming back to composing, I’ve made it a priority to step back and reassess anytime I’m not having fun. Humor has become central to that—not just as an artistic tool, but as a way of surviving. Ironically, I guess I’m taking humor very seriously.
You’ve been working more with synthesizers recently, both in your compositions, such as the music was so beautiful, that i realized i hadn’t forgiven myself, and cried, and in your duo Choir Siren. What is it about the synthesizer that you feel needs your focus?
As a competitive child pianist, the keyboard was my first composing tool and has always felt like home. The world of electronic music feels freer from the hyper-competitive music culture I grew up in. Electronic musicians are curious about gear without competing, since everyone’s setup is so individualized. It’s more about sharing—like, “What gear are you using? How did you make that sound?”—while celebrating our gear choice differences.
Synthesizers have this incredible ability to create big, orchestral sounds while still feeling so intimate because they’re designed to be played by an individual. Analog synths feel temperamental and organic, almost like acoustic instruments.
That’s one of the reasons I love my Prophet-6—it’s often impossible to replicate the same sound twice. My piece, the music was so beautiful etc., was an attempt to expand on a Prophet-6 improvisation, but I’ve never been able to replicate the instrument’s original sound.
I’m fascinated by instruments that glitch, fail, or even seem to talk back to me, taking me to places I wouldn’t find through more familiar practices. That unpredictability keeps me grounded in an arts world that’s so often focused on finalized, perfected products.
Choir Siren — Photo by O’Neil Arnold
The Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps is a unique program that immerses composers in the orchestra and the Louisville community. What was your experience as a resident composer in 2023?
It was a lot of composing, press events, and rehearsal time with the orchestra. I’d been used to advocating for out-of-the-box ideas in large institutions but found this residency welcomed them—like including a synthesizer concerto. Teddy embraced unconventional approaches, the musicians were eager, and Jacob Gotlib was an immense support.
I collaborated with VOICES of Kentuckiana, an LGBTQ+ and allies choir, on a project that incorporated audio stories about choir members’ experiences with gender. We conducted the interviews just weeks after protests at the Kentucky Capitol against an anti-trans bill. The project became a powerful way to connect with queer culture in the state, and the choir’s vulnerability made it an incredibly moving experience.
Louisville’s creative scene shaped my experience, with so many reaching out to me when I first moved here—the people and sense of community really works in the program’s favor. Having more than one resident composer at a time was also an incredibly smart choice, and I got so lucky with my cohort companions.
Tyler Taylor, a Louisville native, gave us deeper insight into the city’s socio-political climate, while Lisa Bielawa’s extensive experience organizing large-scale projects—and navigating the challenges of working with staff and executives—offered perspectives I wouldn’t have had otherwise as someone who was not quite permanent staff, but not just a guest composer either. Their knowledge was invaluable, and having them as family kept the residency from feeling isolating.
A year wasn’t nearly enough to feel fully immersed in the community, so I still live in Louisville. I’m incredibly grateful to be part of its intimate, vibrant creative scene.
As you perform with Choir Siren, compose for the concert stage, and take on other multidisciplinary projects, how do each of these unique endeavors inform your practice in ways the others can’t?
I love that all these individual skills bring something unique to my overall practice, but they also feel deeply interconnected. Choir Siren, the improvising electro-acoustic duo I co-created with Emily Ravenscraft, challenges me to embrace imperfection and spontaneity. The project grew out of our shared trauma from classical conservatory training and our desire to push back against perfectionism—both in the spaces we perform and within ourselves.
Emily often reminds me that our shows can be “low-pressure, high-reward.” That freedom to experiment in real time contrasts sharply with writing for the concert stage, where the process is more deliberate. Improvising helps me think more organically in my composed work, while my experience with concert music brings structure and trajectory to Choir Siren.
I dove into electronic music during my years producing in the witch-pop band Twin Pixie, and it completely changed how I approach concert music. Working in DAWs gave me the freedom to record and experiment with sounds directly, without needing to translate them into an instruction manual. Now, when I’m composing for notated projects, I almost always record my ideas into a DAW before touching notation. It helps me focus on the sonic experience rather than the technical mechanics.
I also started thinking about pop production in the same way I think about writing for an orchestra—how sounds clash or support each other, layering, and balancing foreground versus background. In pop production, though, you can create one “instrument” out of, say, 1,000 elephant calls. That sense of imagination feeds back into how I think about concert music.
TJ Cole — Photo by Jeffrey Parish and Brittany Conder
In recent years, I’ve become more immersed in interdisciplinary work. It started with being invited to perform 20-minute sets at bar venues where I could do whatever I wanted, and witness so many unique projects. I feel grateful I experienced this in Montreal, Philadelphia, and Louisville—local DIY scenes are where it’s at! These performances let me explore props, fashion, movement, and sound art—tools I might not find in traditional spaces. Now I’m thinking about how to bring these elements into my concert music to create more dynamic performances.
In composed spaces, I can retreat into a creative cocoon and dive deeply into ideas, while in improvised or multidisciplinary spaces, I’m invited to take risks and experiment with fewer rules. Each discipline brings unique collaboration and problem-solving, and they all inform my practice.
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